Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival to host tributes to Hilary Mantel

Three tributes to the life of Dame Hilary Mantel will the held at this year’s Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival, taking place from 20th to 24th September 2023.

Mantel, who died in September 2022, was honorary president of the festival, which is now in its 15th year.

Mantel’s agent Bill Hamilton, her lifelong friend Anne Preston, and the actor Ben Miles (Thomas Cromwell in the stage production of "Wolf Hall") will take part in the event. The three also paid tribute to Mantel as part of a memorial service held at Southwark Cathedral earlier this year.

Miles will join with his photographer brother George Miles to talk about their experience working with Dame Hilary on the making of the Wolf Hall Picture Book where they spent many years exploring the locations Thomas Cromwell visited and inhabited.

Pianist Katherine Rockhill will also be performing the original music created by Debbie Wiseman for the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall. She will be joined by the actor Anton Lesser, who played Sir Thomas More, who will read extracts from the novel.

Headlining the wider programme are Lemn Sissay, Alexander McCall Smith, David Baddiel and Polly Toynbee. They are joined at the festival by Alastair Campbell, Kate Mosse, Natalie Haynes, Charlie Higson and Kim Sherwood. In current affairs, Tatton Spiller, founder of Simple Politics, will join MP and journalist Chris Bryant and journalist Lord Danny Finkelstein to talk about the politics of the last few years. Ben Riley Smith, political editor of the Daily Telegraph, will give the full story of what has happened in British politics over the last decade.

Journalist and bestselling author Sathnam Sangera will be talking to the festival’s new president Cathy Rentzenbrink. Kate Mosse, founder director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, will interview three of the most exciting debut novelists of 2023 in the Hilary Mantel Emerging Writers Event.

Sue Briggs, festival committee chair, said: “We’re overjoyed to welcome such an inspiring and interesting range of authors to Budleigh Salterton. We are also pleased to have curated three events to commemorate our wonderful former president Dame Hilary Mantel, alongside such a range of diverse and fascinating speakers.”